Moniac joins Trekka at Venice Biennale

The New Zealand exhibition for the
prestigious 50th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art links
two ingenious Kiwi inventions – the Trekka and the
Moniac.

In his installation This is the Trekka, New
Zealand artist Michael Stevenson links the Trekka, hailed as
New Zealand’s only homegrown automobile, to the Moniac – the
world’s first economic computer described by Dr Alan
Bollard, Governor of the Reserve Bank, as “a work of
genius.” A perspex labyrinth, the Moniac is a water-driven
analogue computer, a hydraulic model of a national economy.
Water flows through a series of plastic tanks, gauges,
sluices and tubes, representing money in circulation.

The Moniac, housed at the New Zealand Institute of
Economic Research (NZIER) in Wellington since 1987, is
currently on its way to Venice with the Trekka. Together,
the Trekka and the Moniac will form the centrepiece of a
larger installation that presents a big-picture view of New
Zealand industry and culture in the Cold War
period.

Standing two metres high and more than one metre
wide, the Moniac was designed to demonstrate how economies
work, by New Zealand economist Dr Bill Phillips while he was
studying at the London School of Economics in London in
1949.

“Dr Bill Phillips was a pioneer,“ says Dr Alan
Bollard, a Moniac enthusiast who helped re-assemble the
Moniac when it arrived in New Zealand in 1987. “When Dr
Phillips constructed the Moniac it was the most advanced
economic computer in the world.”

In 1949, the Moniac was a
ground-breaking mechanism for modelling macro-economics. At
the Venice Biennale in 2003, the Moniac will visually
represent the New Zealand economy. It will be linked to the
Trekka’s Czech-built motor and together they will form a
wishful mixed metaphor - the Trekka powering the national
economy, making it pump.

Michael Stevenson
decided to incorporate the Moniac into his installation,
This is the Trekka, when he saw the machine in action at
NZIER. “I was captivated by this ingenious device and the
way in which it could enhance my installation and the story
I wanted to tell. The Moniac is able to physically and
visually stand in for ‘the national economy’ and it is this
synthesis of mechanics and economic concepts that makes the
Moniac so rich in metaphor.”

The Trekka tells the story of
a South Pacific nation reputedly bartering sheep skins for
Skoda motors across the Iron Curtain. Although the Trekka
was hailed as homegrown, a product of Kiwi-can-do
inventiveness, it was manufactured around a Czechoslovakian
chassis and motor. It was, therefore, not entirely New
Zealand-made.

The
exhibition is typical of Stevenson’s approach, she says. His
latest projects have been fact-finding missions that uncover
bizarre links between art history and social history and
offer an outsider perspective, a view at odds with the
prevailing mindset.

The venue for the New Zealand
exhibition in 2003 is La Maddalena. The only round building
in the city, La Maddalena is a rare example of 18th century
architecture in Venice. The church has been closed for many
years while both the building and its priceless artworks
have been retored. It is the first time La Maddalena has
been used as a venue for the Venice Biennale and the
Venetian public is eagerly awaiting the re-opening of the
church with the New Zealand exhibition. Boris Kremer and
Robert Leonard are the co-curators of This is the Trekka.
Boris Kremer is currently Curator of the International
Studio Programme at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Robert
Leonard is Curator of Contemporary Art at Auckland Art
Gallery Toi o Tämaki.

Creative New Zealand Chief
Executive Elizabeth Kerr says New Zealand’s presence at the
2003 Biennale with the work of Michael Stevenson builds on
the success of New Zealand’s inaugural presence in 2001.
Writing in Art Monthly Australia, K.P. Hall said of the 2001
New Zealand artists Jacqueline Fraser and Peter Robinson:
“The impact of this dynamic combination of artists has
created a strong statement, resolutely placing New Zealand
on the international arts map.”

The New Zealand exhibition
at the 50th Venice Biennale 2003 is an initiative of
Creative New Zealand, Arts Council of New Zealand Toi
Aotearoa, working in partnership with City Gallery
Wellington. The Gallery will tour the exhibition in New
Zealand after the Venice Biennale. Australian arts
management company Global Art Projects (GAP) has assisted
with exhibition management.

Established in 1895, the
Venice Biennale is the world’s oldest international critical
forum for contemporary visual art, attracting thousands of
the world’s most influential artists, curators, critics,
gallery directors and collectors.

Creative New Zealand
and City Gallery Wellington would like to thank the
following for their support and assistance with the New
Zealand exhibition: The Patrons of the Venice Biennale,
Trade New Zealand, New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs
and Trade, Montana Wines Limited, ANZ Banking Group (New
Zealand) Limited, Waimak Mineral Water Limited, New Zealand
Television Archive, New Zealand Institute of Economic
Research. The Moniac is indemnified by the New Zealand
Government.

Michael Stevenson: a brief
biography

Michael Stevenson is one of New Zealand’s most
visible artists on the international stage. He has been
exhibiting regularly in New Zealand and internationally
since 1988 and was New Zealand’s artist-in-residence in
Berlin at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in 2002. He was a finalist
in the 1997 Seppelt Contemporary Art Award and the inaugural
2002 Walters Prize.

Stevenson was awarded a Creative New
Zealand fellowship in 1995. His collaborative work involving
three other artists, Slave Pianos, was part of the 1999 Toi
Toi Toi exhibition of contemporary New Zealand art at the
Museum Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany. His work, Call Me
Immendorff, was presented at Kapinos Galerie, Berlin in
2000. Last May, he represented New Zealand in the 2002
Biennale of Sydney with his work Can Dialectics Break
Bricks? – an immaculately researched installation, which
addressed the role of contemporary art in the 1979 Iran
hostage crisis.

Dr Bill Phillips and the Moniac: a
brief history

Dr Bill Phillips became well-known as an
economist in 1958 when he published his seminal work on the
relationship between inflation and unemployment, illustrated
by “the Phillips curve”.

However, he was not a typical
economist. Born in 1914, the son of a Kiwi dairy farmer, Dr
Phillips left New Zealand before finishing school to work in
Australia. His jobs included crocodile hunter and cinema
manager. In World War II, Dr Phillips served in the RAF’s
technical branch as an electrical engineer and was captured
by the Japanese, becoming a prisoner of war. After the war
he studied sociology at the London School of Economics (LSE)
where he became interested economics, particularly in
Keynesian theory. It was here that he built the Moniac.

Dr Phillips used a diverse range of materials to create
his computer, including bits and pieces from war surplus
such as obsolete Lancaster bombers. The first Moniac was
created in his landlady’s garage. It was built at a cost of
£400 – more than $32,000 in today’s New Zealand currency.

Dr Phillips first demonstrated the Moniac to a number of
leading economists at the LSE in 1949 where it was very well
received. The machine proved popular with economists around
the world. More Moniacs were built and sent to four other
British universities; Melbourne University in Australia; the
Harvard Business School; and the Ford Motor Company and
Roosevelt College in the United States. Training sessions
were held as far away as the Central Bank of
Guatemala.

Following the creation of the Moniac Dr
Phillips was offered a position at the LSE and eight years
later was appointed Professor. However, the Moniac was never
a huge commercial success and the advent of computers took
economics, and Dr Phillips, in another direction. He
returned to Australia in 1967 and died in Auckland in March
1975. By the late 1960s, the two original Moniacs were
left unused in the basement of the LSE in London. They
stayed there until 1987 when the LSE donated one of them to
the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research in
Wellington. The Moniac remained there until undergoing major
renovation in preparation for its trip to the Venice
Biennale in June 2003.

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